Review & Recommendation: Possets Sicilian Seduction Final Review (9 scents)

I finally finished my final part of the Sicilian Seduction collection review! Part 1's here, and part 2's here. Here's the review for another 9 scents, so it's a total of 26 scents reviewed. Hope this helps you guys make up your minds on what to get before the collection is gone on September 21st! Here's the link to the collection.

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14 carnations

"I imagine the thought of 14 carnations being dug up by the enthusiastic Bendico, and the scent of earth and surrounding plants are the backdrop for the scene. Add bit of fern. I think it is a ravishing scent. Very clean and uncomplicated but beautiful in a deep manner."

This starts of smelling like a heavily sweetened sour plum tea you get from really good boba stores. The kind that uses real ingredients instead of flavourings, and sometimes add in traditional Chinese herbs to make your drink "good for you".

It looks sort of like this
Image courtesy of idealshanghai.com/

You can even smell the acrid smell those preserved sour plums tend to have. There's also this cool, not exactly minty sort of smell that smells exactly like these Chinese cough drops/syrup that taste absolutely delicious. I used to sneak into the medicine cabinet and drink/eat them as a kid. They're sweet, feels icy on your throat, but it's not minty at all. It's hard to describe the scent unless you've tried it.

Then my skin amps up the sweetness to the point where the sour plum tea smell is drowned out. This smell ends up smelling like a slightly dusty, slightly spearmint-y tea with tons of sugar.

TL;DR: Traditional Chinese sour plums and cooling herbs tea.

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Acanthus 

"Named for the type of plant crowning Corinthian columns. Strong clove notes are combined with a grey musk, a foundation of pink damascena rose otto and a good portion of sandalwood (a dark golden sort of sandalwood). Strong and beautiful in the way that Miss Dior used to be, a bit imperious and formal but the sort of scent which would be associated with a wearer with a great deal of command. Somewhat complex yet very harmonious. A cross between an oriental and a chypre, the crossroads of Eastern and European taste."

I smell honeyed roses (almost like rose Turkish delights) with a bit of dry woodiness. This smell reminds me a lot of Holi in Jaipur. When I returned to my hotel, the rose-scented wet towel they offered me to clean up mingled with the smell of the coloured powders smell exactly like this. My experience of Holi may be a bit different though. I was expecting this:

Gorgeous pic by Laura Saffioti, if you're interested in anthropology and other cultures, check out her photography!

But my mom talked to her socialite friends in India & the concierge at the hotel, and they terrified her with stories if people using powders with toxic colouring that's cheaper than the traditional powders (valid) and people who may throw the powder too hard (lolwut.). My mom was convinced I may end up with a broken nose from clouds of coloured powder, so instead, she took the tourist-friendly, toned down Holi celebration packet the hotel was offering. So we all went to another hotel, and threw coloured powder at other tourists in a hotel lawn. And this was my Holi experience:

They had dancers & various animals entertain us. It's almost only tourists participating in the powder throwing in the lawn, and the only locals were kids, or babysitter & dads stuck babysitting kids. Since the powder throwing was only limited to the hotel lawn, my parents managed to stay spotless the whole time.

Yup. Huge difference. So I'm not sure if the normal coloured powder used in Holi smells like the powders I was given. The smell may go "too foreign" (how my roommate described a lot of smells in India she has never encountered before) or too dusty (the wood's very dry) for some people. However, this brings up tons of good memories for me so I was thinking of getting it in full size. Unfortunately, the smell it leaves lingering on my skin after it dries down is very bitter and medicinal on me, so I'm cursing my skin chemistry right now. 

TL;DR: Rose Turkish Delights with something woody & dry that smells so India

Overview: Cloves. That's what it is. The powder I got smelled like honeyed cloves. This scent smells like Rose Turkish Delights with cloves. I added the long version of the description because the last part about this being a cross of Eastern and European taste is so true. That was my experience with the Holi festival in India..it was a "Western" tourist-friendly version of an Indian festival. 

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Bouquet a la Marechale

"Named after a perfume in The Leopard which is worn by the lovely Angelica, I imagine this raven haired beauty to be surrounded by violet and bergamot, and a bewitching light touch of bay to keep the whole thing fresh. Just the sort of thing you would want to wear to a lavish ball which is going to last until 6 a.m.! You can never get tired of this one. An upbeat floral but with very herbal underpinnings."

This smell reminds me a lot of DC's Blue Valentine, just a cooler more powdery version of it. It smells like how a lavender candy I once had tasted (smells different). I need to do a comparison of both.

TL;DR: Cool, powdery, candied blue florals.

Overview: I decided to sniff this scent side-by-side with Darling Clandestine's Blue Valentine to see if they're dupes for each other. Once I did that, it's clear they're very different. While I can immediately identify Bouquet as a cool, powdery candied blue (something about it seems blue, but I could have been biased by my lavender candy experience) florals, I had a hard time even figuring out Blue Valentine was a floral scent. I only identified it as floral through the process of elimination, because the entire thing was just blended so seamlessly.

Bouquet also has a bit of tanginess that Blue Valentine doesn't have, and it's powdery and while Blue Valentine is more rounded and almost lotion-y. The extra that Bouquet has smells a bit like dusty lemons (in a good way). If DC's Blue Valentine is a young girl going to her first ball and discovering her allure for the first time, this is a young woman who's demurely assured of her allure. So this for Blue Valentine:

Another picture by Petrova Julia N. I love how her style is almost a cross between painting and photography. Someone asked me if I deliberately look out for female photographers for my blog photos since more of the commercially celebrated photographers are male. Nope. A lot of the awesome photos I find happen to be taken by female photographers. I do keep a look out for models of colour though. 

vs this for Bouquet:

It's such a simple picture and I have to give more credit to the model, whose expression is just so captivating.
This is a picture by Heine Mann and all I know of the model is that her name is Anastasiya and she's Danish

When they dry down, the smell they leave on my skin are nearly identical, but they're still different enough that I'm getting full sizes of both. 

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Charybdis

" She was associated with whirlpools and so I am using a very aquatic base to which I am adding a strong and serious grey musk, and a good shot of espresso because a girl can't do her best without a nice little espresso (which goes amazingly with the sea). "

Creamy coffee with singed toffee. The toffee smell is that slightly burnt toffee of freshly made toffee popcorn. The kind where it still tastes like creamy, heavenly toffee, but there's a toasted, slightly burnt taste to stop it from going too sweet. This scent unfortunately lasts extremely short on me compared to other Possets perfume, and after 30 min, my skin eats it up and the scent becomes a pretty faint scent of fresh sheafs of paper. This kinda smells like walking through an office in the morning. By 1h, I only get faint traces of that metallic smell a lot of gourmands turn into on me. 

TL;DR: Creamy coffee with singed toffee swept off by sheafs of fresh paper.

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Etna

"Strong and aromatic, Etna is a powerful blend of grey and crystal musk, a musk I put together which I call 992 and packs a real punch."

There's a traditional Chinese salve sort of bitter, herbal smell to this, mixed with Chinese wine. The smell reminds me of my grandma taking care of me when I was sick as a kid, so it makes me feel very nostalgic. 

The bitter, herbal smell disappears after 10 min, but now it's that sweet, dusty smell of going through the sheets of yellowing paper in my grandmother's drawers. There's even that sweet, slightly incense-y smell smell her drawers always have thanks to her storing paper for ritual burning in it. I miss my grandma!

I happened to be wearing it during a meeting and my clients agree it smells very familiar -like traditional Chinese salves and something else that kinda reminds them of their grandmas. We ended up talking about our grandmas for a while.

So even though smelling like a Chinese grandma may not sound appealing to most people, I'm getting this in full size. Why? Because people are way nicer after talking about their grandmas. No matter how scary their grandmas may be. My grandma used to be able to scale walls and slaughter rampaging wild pigs when she was younger (she lived in a very rural area, in the Indonesian jungle)...you don't mess with Chinese grandmas. They're pretty intense. I can see a scent named after a volcano representing them.

TL;DR: Chinese grandmas and their traditional herbal salves

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Jardin di Pincipio 

"Olive blossoms, cupped old roses, waxy white magnolia, and a hint of clove streaming out of the kitchen or was that a flower which was a clovelike blossom. Mixed with the scent of earth and the scent of water on limestone with moss. "

The first 5 minutes is a bit scary as roses exploded everywhere. They're the extremely sweet kind of roses, and there's a fresh, green scent in this to stop the rose from going too heavy. Luckily, it didn't get heavier. After 5 minutes, the roses ends up blending into the scent to give it a more mature, powdery sort of cool, green scent. Mature and not old woman-ish. I can see this in a classy, British woman in her early 40s. It's the scent of drinking a creative mint tea blend that has all sorts of flowers and leaves in it, with a very proper, classy older woman wearing a rose-scented powder that's powdery and slightly heavy, but the scent is more luxurious than garish. It's the kind of powder you imagine would come in a container that looks like this:

Image courtesy of Beauty & the Bath, and they have tons of recipes for bath powders here!

TL;DR: Enjoying a cup of mint tea that costs half your paycheck with an elegant, older British woman wearing a rose-scented powder.

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Myrtle of Venus

"Peach, apricot, myrtle, grey (seafoamy) musk."

This smells like a white wine sangria with sugared apricots as dessert. Possets' fruit scents tend to smell like liqueur or candy on me, and this went the alcohol route. The combination ended up smelling like a white wine sangria -the kind with peaches, apricots, apples, etc. Then my skin starts amping up the sugar in this and this becomes very sweet. It's such a gorgeous scent underneath too! Damn my skin chemistry!

TL;DR: White wine sangria and sugared apricots drowned by a deluge of sugar.

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Scylla 

"The story of Scylla is another beautiful nymph run afoul of a jealous goddess. There is a statue of Scylla in Calabria which shows her at the instant she is turned into a sea monster. Very frightening and very well done. I always think of Scylla a such a tragic figure and I put in several different sorts of figs in this fragrance in order to capture the right balance of sweet, dark, and elixir. There is a small amount of lychee here to save it from being too heavy. Very beautiful and still quite dark. For fig lovers. She is the companion piece to Charybdis."

If you're curious about how the Scylla statue looks like, here's a pic from the Possets blog

Fruity, floral pink peppercorn. The peppercorn smell makes this scent totally unique and turns it into a fresh, mildly spicy version of what would otherwise be a cutesy, pre-teen girl sort of scent. I smell star fruit and green mango candies in this. The peppercorn leans towards chilli at times, and the scent reminds me of the taste of preserved chilli mango drowned out by a lot of starfruit candy. And I say taste, since those preserved chilli mangoes often smell acrid. 

TL;DR: Starfruit & mango candies with pink peppercorn

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The God of Olives

"A lovely rendition of olive blossom (osmanthus) combined with pure bergamot, smoothed over with a beautiful sweet musk of some intensity. It blooms in a calm and enticing way over your skin and surrounds you with a lovely aura, a cloud of coolness to protect you from a sultry day."

The first 5 minutes, this smells a lot like a Thai massage oil - dry, herbal in that cool, almost lemongrass way, with light, sweet florals. The dryness and herbal smell eased up and the scent takes a more rounded, almost soapy quality. Now it's a scent I can see on an elegant, ageless Thai lady who wears no perfume, and is instead scented only by a handmade soap containing traditional Thai beauty products that makes her skin porcelain perfect. 

TL;DR: Floral-herbal soap on a very elegant, Thai lady.

I actually want to add a picture of my friend's mom, who's one of the most elegant woman I know. She has to constantly dispel rumours that she was formerly Miss Thailand, and when you see her, you'll know why. Since I don't have a picture of her, this picture by paza140 will do.